


Picnic

by DwarvenBeardSpores



Category: Rusty Quill Gaming (Podcast), The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Crack, Friendship, Gen, Mild Stabbing, Picnics, Reunions, and mentions of people getting eaten, eel sandwiches, mild horror elements, people change, snacks that are not food, the timeline of this is "I'm having fun"
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-04
Updated: 2020-05-04
Packaged: 2021-03-02 23:14:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,384
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24004906
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DwarvenBeardSpores/pseuds/DwarvenBeardSpores
Summary: Sasha catches up with some old mates.
Relationships: Breekon & Hope & The Coffin, Breekon & Hope - Relationship, Sasha Racket & Breekon & Hope, Sasha Racket & The Coffin
Comments: 8
Kudos: 65





	Picnic

**Author's Note:**

> Happy finals time everybody!!!! Yesterday HoloXam and I started talking about this, and then Holo went to bed and I slammed this out and edited in just under four hours, cause Sometimes things just Have to be Written. Did a last pass of edits this morning and here we goooooo!

The park’s really too bright and exposed to be proper comfortable, but Sasha sees some old mates when she passes by, and it’s been, right, it’s been _ages_ since she’s seen them. Not since _well_ before she left both Londons, but it’s clearly them. They’ve got this real strage look about them. Like, most people, you don’t see them sitting all bulky on the ground and think _they’ve gotta be deliverymen, best move on, best not even think of it._ With these ones you do. So she hops the fence and stalks over like an oily ferret.

They’re sitting next to a big old coffin with chains wrapped around it, having lunch. Little Greg’s eating what looks like a bottle of a fancy person’s shampoo, but Big Greg’s got eel sandwiches and Sasha’s _well_ pleased with that. She nicks one and takes a seat next to the coffin. It takes Big Greg a full minute to notice. 

“Oi,” he says. “You said you didn’t want eels.”

“I don’t,” says Little Greg. 

“Then give back my sandwich,” says Big Greg.

“Don’t have it,” says Little Greg. 

They could go on like this, Sasha knows. So she makes sure to be extra obvious about unwrapping the sandwich and biting in.

They turn, with big old weird glares like they’re gonna scare her, but Sasha hasn’t been scared of them for _ages._ She was at first, when they started running errands for Barrat, but they weren’t that bad, really. Sometimes they gave her rides.

“Wot?” says Little Greg.

“It’s little Sasha,” says Big Greg.

Sasha grins through a mouthful of eel. “Cheers, mates.”

“And that’s my sandwich,” says Big Greg.

“Told you it wasn’t me,” says Little Greg.

Sasha takes another bite. They glower a bit, faces folding in on themselves, but don’t protest. She thinks they might be glad to see her. “Now this,” she says. “You’d call it an _eel_ good sandwich.” She waits expectantly.

“Are you makin’ puns at us?” says Big Greg. 

“Nobody makes puns at us,” says Little Greg. He reaches up and scratches the side of his face where Sasha remembers a real fancy triangle-shaped scar. His cheek is smooth. When she looks, she sees that Big Greg’s got scars in all the wrong places too. And then when she looks closer still, that nothing about them matches what she remembers. 

“You got new faces then?” she says.

“Yeah,” says Big Greg. He tips his cap back on his head to show his off.

“New names, too,” says Little Greg. “He’s Breekon.” 

“He’s Hope,” says Big Greg. Says Breekon, rather.

“Aw, right. Yeah. Good on you.” Sasha looks between Breekon and Hope. She can’t remember now what she thought they looked like before. She wonders where the faces came from. “Can I still call you both Greg?” 

“If you like,” says Hope (Little Greg).

“Only you, though,” says Breekon (Big Greg).

“It kind of ruins the air of menace,” says Hope.

“Yeah, alright,” Sasah says. “I mean, you both do look proper tough. Like, I’ve been watching the park gates and nobody’s come in at all the whole time I’ve been here, they just get fidgety and walk away.”

“Thank you,” says Breekon.

Hope takes another bite out of his shampoo bottle. It oozes over his hand.

“And you’ve got a coffin,” Sasha says. She pokes at it with her foot. “There someone inside?”

“No,” says Breekon.

“Yes,” says Hope. 

Something inside the coffin scratches right where Sasha touched it.

She yanks her foot back. “Well it’s not _empty,_ mate! There’s, there’s something scratching in there! Look, I know you haul a lot of real spooky shit around but that is, I mean, that seems a little far, y’know?” 

It’d be easy to pick the padlock on the front of it. Let whatever was inside out. She just needed them to not be looking. (Last time she’d seen these two, she wouldn’t’ve thought twice. People just get put in boxes sometimes, and the best you can do is keep out of them yourself. Grizzop and Azu wouldn’t stand for it, though, and Sasha’s got plenty of space to run, so she’s not sure she would either. Maybe it depends on who the person is.)

“It’s not that simple,” says Hope.

“The Coffin is an open mouth to the Pit,” says Breekon.

Sasha squints at it. Didn’t look like there was a pit, just a box. She pokes the side with her foot again, and it still scratches. Keeps scratching as long as her foot’s there.

“Should we show her?” says Breekon.

“Should be fine,” says Hope. “It fed this morning.” 

_Thonk thonk thonk,_ goes Sasha’s foot. _Scratch scratch scratch_ goes the coffin back.

“If you want to see,” says Breekon.

“Most people don’t,” says Hope.

Sasha rolls her eyes. “Course I do. You can’t just say stuff like ‘it’s got a big scratchy pit inside’ and then _not_ let me see.” She leans forward and takes the padlock in her hand, ready to pick it open, but it just clicks on its own. “Oh, that’s rubbish, mate,” she says, shoving aside the chains. “That’s the worst lock I’ve ever seen! I coulda unlocked that from _inside_.”

“It wants to meet you,” says Breekon.

Sasha pulls the lid open. It’s not a coffin on the inside. It’s a long flight of stairs that go down, down, _way_ down into the earth. They’re dusty and worn, and inside it gets dark and close. _“Oh,_ ” says Sasha.

The scratching is gone, replaced by a low, whistling moan coming from down below, and a grinding noise, like rocks rubbing together. She leans over the stairs and all of a sudden her leather jacket feels, like, _real_ heavy, like it’s full of water and going to drag her down. She almost drowned once. Couldn’t breathe. Zolf saved her. And like, yeah, today she’s got sixteen daggers in it, but that’s usually fine. 

Must be the pit.

“What’s it scratch _with_?” Sasha asks. “I mean, this is just a hole.”

Behind her comes the noise of both Big and Little Greg shrugging.

“And what’s _down_ there? Is it like tunnels and catacombs and stuff? I went into some catacombs one time, they were real dark, and stuff kept caving in on us, and then I sort of died? But it’s fine, y’know. Is that what’s down there? I’d be better at catacombs now, I bet. Slip right through them like a... a ferret, but like with a drill on its head? But silent. Y’know?”

“Don’t know,” says Big Greg.

“Never been down there,” says Little Greg. 

“Never seen anyone come out,” says Big Greg. 

“Don’t you try,” says Little Greg, and reaches for the back of Sasha’s collar.

She whirls around and stabs him in the hand before he can get close. “Oi!” she snaps. 

“You don’t wanna go in there,” says Big-- says Breekon.

“That hurt,” says Hope, doing something that looks like a scowl.

Sasha yanks the dagger out of his hand. It’ll heal up alright. These two don’t get much hurt by stabbing. “I just wanted to see,” she mutters, but, well… on a second glance down it’s _real_ dark, and _real_ close, so maybe she doesn’t actually.

“It eats people,” says Breekon.

“Too many things do, really.” Sasha wonders if Hamid’s gonna want to eat people when he gets proper dragony. Hopefully not. Sounds like it’d be a lot of work, and he likes regular food plenty.

“Hey mate,” she calls down into the hole, and her voice doesn’t echo even a little bit, just gets eaten up by the rock. “Why don’t you give eel a try instead?” She gives a toss, and half a sandwich drops down the stairs into the ground. Drops real fast. Like it was pulled. Sasha knows how things fall, and this is almost dizzyingly quick.

Maybe that’s… maybe that’s enough for now.

The lid seems real heavy when she closes it.

Cel could explain those things, maybe. They know a lot about when things go weird.

“See?” says Little Greg. 

Sasha takes a breath she didn’t know she’d been missing. “Alright,” she says. “Yeah, I think I got it.”

Breekon wraps the coffin back up and clicks the padlock. “That’s enough of that,” he says. “Gotta keep it hungry for the delivery tomorrow.”

“You deliver people into it?” Sasha asks.

“Nope,” Hope says. “Deliver it to people.”

“It’s surprisingly easy to carry,” says Hope. 

“Considering it’s an endless tunnel into the ground,” says Breekon.

Sasha kicks the lid again, friendly like, and this time the Coffin just starts moaning. “Oh, I know all about that. It’s like a bag of holding, yeah? But a coffin. Coffin of holding.” It makes a noise so Sasha thinks it likes that. “One time me and my friends, right-- I’ve got friends now, did you know?-- One time we found some bags of holding and nicked them, and they were all full of just dirt. Dirt all over the place. We poured ‘em out looking for this orb thing? And it took _ages._ There was _so_ much dirt. Bet that’s what this Coffin’s like inside.”

The Coffin considers the comparison and finds it lacking and groans at her. Sasha just shrugs at it.

“Where’s my sandwich?” says Breekon.

“Coffin ate it,” Sasha says, pulling hers out of her pocket. “Wasn’t going to give up a perfectly good lunch to make a moral point or whatever.”

“You gave up _my_ lunch,” says Breekon, the indignation just barely ringing false.

Hope hands him an uneaten bottle of shampoo.

For a while, they eat in silence, and Sasha thinks about caves and rocks and being buried under the sea and being drowned in buckets. She sits on top of the Coffin, and it keeps making noises at her, but they’re not mad noises so she stays. Eventually, it starts to sing. Nearly puts her to sleep, except she notices it happening and fights it.

The Coffin’s covered in scratches and markings. There’s some that say DO NOT OPEN and she can see why they got there, but they’re not gonna do any good, especially not with that lock. There’s some that look like fingernails, or like it’s been stabbed a bunch by knives. There’s a ring from where someone left a wet cup of something. And then there are carvings that were obviously done on purpose, like names, and curving designs.

“The spirals are from its boyfriend,” says Hope.

“Keeps getting us lost when he visits,” says Breekon.

“Take turns we don’t mean to.”

“Drive in circles.”

Sasha laughs.

“You can carve something if you like,” says Hope. “It doesn’t mind.”

“Do your name,” says Breekon. “Sasha Racket.”

Sasha pulls out a dagger, but her name? Nah. The last name doesn’t suit her anymore, and the first name isn’t the sort of thing you write places. She spins the dagger between her hands and thinks.

While she thinks, she gets Breekon and Hope to tell her about some of the deliveries they’ve made. They’ve always been making. Makes a game of trying to appraise how much they’d be worth if someone were to find them and sell them, instead of just hauling them back and forth. It’s hard, cause they’re all weird spooky things that don’t match the kinds of magic Sasha knows. Like, if you’ve got a pot that’s so big and so ornate, it’s gonna sell, right, but you add a weird meat smell and suddenly maybe it won’t. Or maybe it sells for _more_ because someone likes meat smells, or they know what to do with it? It’s not Sasha’s market, but it is fun.

“We should go,” Breekon says eventually. It’s starting to get dark. Long shadows stretch on the grass before them, strange and lumpy. Breekon and Hope’s don’t quite match their shapes, but then, they never have.

“Need to make our stop,” says Hope.

“Can’t be late.”

“Better not get lost again,” says Hope. He gives a stern look to the Coffin, which radiates smug innocence.

“Hang on,” Sasha says. “Didn’t carve anything yet.”

“Work quick,” says Hope. He grabs the front of the Coffin, and Breekon grabs the back, and they lift it neatly up the ground, Sasha still perched on the lid. She scrambles around for a moment to get a good look underneath and see all the empty space where a staircase isn’t. Then she lifts her head and looks around the park, enjoying the view from a new angle, enjoying the sway of the ride. It’s almost like that time Big Greg had let her climb onto his shoulders when tromped around Other London to pass off a bracelet with a spider or something on it, and nobody’d even noticed her, even though they’d been real scared of the Gregs.

Only it’s not like that at all.

They carry her to the edge of the park, where they’ve got a carriage waiting that’s got _Breekon and Hope_ painted on the sides in peeling letters.

“See you around,” says Little Greg. He doesn’t match the carriage somehow. Too old for it, maybe.

“Unless you want to come with us,” says Big Greg. He doesn’t match either. Too big.

Time was, Sasha would’ve loved the chance to disappear and do deliveries. But she’s got a better gig now. It’s got tunnels and carriages and meat smells and eels and travel and loads more besides. She finishes her carving with a quick flourish of the knife and hops off. 

“Nah,” she says. “Good to catch up though, yeah?”

“Yeah,” says Hope.

“What’s that mean?” says Breekon, peering at the Coffin.

“That’s me, right? I mean, it’s my group. Which is, like, that’s the part of me worth leaving places, y’know?” The words still don’t work the way she wants them to. She doesn’t even know what she’s trying to say, just that… “Things’ve changed.”

“They always do,” says Breekon. 

“They never really do,” says Hope.

“Yeah,” Sasha says. “Well.”

And then they get in the carriage and drive off, her old mates and the Coffin that now has “LOLOMG” proudly carved in the lid. It’s getting dark, so Sasha turns back in the direction of the hotel her team’s at and legs it down the street.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! I’d love to hear what you thought. You can also find me on tumblr as dwarven-beard-spores, twitter as @beardspores, and dreamwidth as dwarvenbeardspores.
> 
> (The Coffin's boyfriend is Michael and you can read all about that in [some other fics I wrote](https://archiveofourown.org/series/1625002))


End file.
